I Used to Be Funny review – Rachel Sennott can’t save messy PTSD drama

The Shiva Baby and Bodies, Bodies, Bodies standout goes serious in an uneven and at times frustrating combination of disparate tones and genre

There’s a particular, distinctly online note – dead-eyed, chaotic, teetering between hyper self-consciousness and delusional confidence – that comedian Rachel Sennott can hit so effectively it will temporarily and memorably spark its container: Twitter, where she rose to prominence as a self-aware zillennial comedy It Girl; Bodies Bodies Bodies, where she provided the bulk of the horror comedy’s actual zingers; The Idol, where her bit part as a pop star’s assistant was one of the misbegotten HBO series’ few highlights. As a lead – in Emma Seligman’s claustrophobic feature Shiva Baby and, less successfully, in Seligmans’ follow-up comedy Bottoms – Sennott stretched her shtick but remained most successful in this familiar, self-deprecating zone, though she has hinted at something darker and less irony-pilled.

I Used to Be Funny, the feature debut from the Canadian writer-director Ally Pankiw, overambitiously tries to combine Sennott’s proven comedic chops with a trauma plot in the format of a thriller. Sennott plays Sam Cowell, a Toronto-based twentysomething reeling from a mysterious (though entirely predictable) Traumatic Event handled like a lump of coal (“things have been different since, you know …”). The fallout has made her, according to small glances at a Twitter-like timeline, a social media pariah and a recluse. Once a promising standup, Sam is now nearly bedridden, floating through life via the emotional and financial support of her friends, fellow comics Paige (Sabrina Jalees) and Philip (Caleb Hearon, by far the best asset of this movie), and concerned ex-boyfriend Noah (Ennis Esmer).

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